


The Invention of Lying

by Treesinthewind



Category: Psych
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-09 01:04:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/768174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Treesinthewind/pseuds/Treesinthewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shawn doesn’t call, which is strange. She never expected him to respect her dictum that she needed space. [Post-Ep for "Right Turn or Left for Dead."]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Invention of Lying

Shawn doesn’t call, which is strange. She never expected him to respect her dictum that she needed space.

Instead, he moves his stuff out of the apartment while she’s at work one day, and her phone remains silent.

* * *

She and Carlton catch a few cases that they solve without Shawn and Gus showing up the way they normally do, inserting themselves into the investigation whether they’re asked or not.

Carlton remarks that it’s nice to have a few days without Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb around, and that this is the best wedding present he ever could have asked for from Spencer. If he notices the way Juliet tenses up at Shawn’s name, he doesn’t say anything about it.

* * *

Gus stops by the station one afternoon to talk to the chief. He pauses in the doorway of Karen’s office and looks at Juliet with sad eyes, but he doesn’t say anything. He hesitates again on his way out of the precinct, but once again moves on without speaking.

Juliet is surprised; she had figured Shawn would ask Gus to plead his case with her. Or that Gus would go ahead and do it without being asked.

The chief comes out of her office a while later and tells them that Psych is shutting down for a vacation, so they won’t be working with them for a while.

This time, Carlton turns his steady, assessing gaze on Juliet, but he still doesn’t say anything.

* * *

She runs into Henry at the grocery store. He has three pineapples in his cart, so she figures that Shawn must be staying with him.

He greets her casually, and they talk for a few minutes. He doesn’t bring up Shawn, and neither does she.

As they head their separate ways, however, Henry says, “I’m not going to get in the middle of this thing between you and Shawn. But if it really is over for good, you have to tell Lloyd. He’s driving me crazy with all his talk of us being one big happy family.”

She hadn’t even known that Henry and Lloyd were still hanging out; after Mexico, she’d figured that was a lost cause. She wonders why Shawn never told her.

* * *

An investigation goes terribly wrong, and Buzz ends up getting shot by their suspect, who disappears as they all turn their attention to keeping Buzz alive. Buzz is in surgery for hours, and it’s touch and go for a while there, but in the end the doctors tell them that he will pull through.

Shawn and Gus are already at the station when Juliet gets back from the hospital, poring over the case files in the conference room. Juliet isn’t sure if Karen called them, or if they came in of their own volition, but no one offers up that information, and she isn’t going to ask.

Shawn looks tired and a little haggard, but then they all look that way, after the hours of worrying about Buzz.

As the search for the suspect progresses, Juliet watches Shawn closely. Now that she’s looking for it, she can sometimes catch how he makes connections, but most of the time, it really is like he’s pulling clues out of thin air.

In the end, it’s Shawn’s insights that lead to the capture of their suspect. Carlton is a little rougher than usual as he cuffs the man, but they all look the other way, because this man shot one of their own.

As she loads the suspect into the back of the cruiser, Juliet looks up and finds Shawn watching her. She thinks he’s going to say something, but he only gives her a little nod and turns away.

* * *

Shawn and Gus start working cases again after that, but they wait until they’re called, and Shawn keeps his distance from her. (Gives her space, she reminds herself.)

* * *

They’re in the fifth hour of a stakeout when Carlton finally brings it up.

“So what happened with you and Spencer?”

“He lied to me.”

“About what?”

Juliet wants to tell him the whole story, but she reminds herself that Carlton is someone who can’t know the truth. (Who’s lying now? she asks herself.)

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

She looks him straight in the eye as she says that, and for a moment, she thinks that maybe he’s going to let it go. The first thing she learned as Carlton’s partner was that he doesn’t like to talk about personal stuff, especially if he has to work at it.

He surprises her, though.

“Did I ever tell you about the first time I met Spencer?” His tone is conversational, but he doesn’t wait to a response. “He’d been calling in tips for months, all of them spot on. We thought he had to have inside information, so we hauled him in to interrogation about a string of appliance store robberies. I was three seconds from arresting him, and Lucinda told him that the only thing that could help him was if he could give us a plausible reason for why he knew so much about the case. So he told us he was psychic, and then did a cold reading on everyone there to prove it. Managed to solve a vandalism case in the process too.”

Juliet keeps her face turned out the window, gaze locked on the suspect’s house. Of all the people she thought would speak up in Shawn’s defense, Carlton wasn’t even at the bottom of the list—he wasn’t on the list at all.

“We had to let him go,” Carlton continues, “Even though I still think it would have done him a world of good to at least hold him for a couple of hours. But we let him go, and I thought we’d seen the last of him, but then Karen chased him down on his way out of the station and roped him in on a kidnapping case we were working. And everything kind of ballooned from there.”

Shawn had said something about the whole lie starting out of self-preservation. At least that much had been true, then.

She risks a glance at Carlton, and finds him looking at her with knowing compassion in his eyes. He _knows_ , she realizes.

“When did you figure it out?” she asks.

“I never really believed in the first place.”

She thinks about how much Shawn has annoyed Carlton over the years, and how Carlton has had the information to bring him down all along. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“Because as much as Spencer makes me want to shoot things, he is actually a damn good detective. And there are a lot of low-lifes that might still be on the streets today if it weren’t for him.”

Juliet turns her gaze back out the window. Still no movement from their suspect.

“I feel like an idiot,” she admits.

“Well, Spencer’s the biggest idiot I know, with the possible exception of Guster, so that makes the two of you a good pair.”

She turns back to Carlton with her mouth gaping, unable to believe he’d just said that. His mouth is turned up in a little grin, and he winks at her. Marriage really does suit him, she thinks.

His gaze turns serious again. “If I had to guess,” he says, “I’d bet Spencer has only ever lied to you about one thing. Admittedly it was a huge thing, but he was already wrapped up in that lie before you came along, and by the time you two got to a point where he should have told you the truth, he was even further down the rabbit hole.”

Juliet hates that what he says actually makes sense. Especially since his story lines up so well with what Shawn had said.

“You know, Shawn said pretty much the same thing as you when he tried to explain it. You two really are in sync.”

Carlton actually physically shudders at that.

“Believe me, my life would be much more peaceful if you ditched that lunatic for good. But aside from being an imbecile, he…actually is a pretty good guy.”

Juliet has to laugh a little at how hard it seems to be for Carlton to actually say those words. Before she can respond, however, his attention focuses out the window behind her.

“Suspect is on the move,” he says, and they snap back into work mode.

* * *

Later, when the case is wrapped up and the bad guys are in custody, Juliet stops by the Psych office.

Shawn isn’t there, but Gus is.

Before she can ask about Shawn, Gus says what has clearly been on his mind for weeks.

“These past seven years are the longest Shawn has ever held a job, beating his past record by about six and a half years. For all his joking around, he takes what he does seriously.”

“I know.”

“And this is the first time I’ve ever seen him give someone space when they asked for it. Normally he’d be pestering the person like a gnat.”

“I know.”

Gus gives her a long look, as if he’s trying to figure out if she really does know what a big deal this has been for Shawn.

“He’s at the diner,” he says finally.

* * *

Of course Shawn is at the diner, the place where they first met. He’s even sitting at the counter.

“Is this seat taken?” Juliet asks, her voice a little shaky.

Shawn spins his stool around, and looks at her like he can’t quite believe that she’s there. “No, it’s free,” he says at last. His voice sounds rough, as if he hasn’t used it much lately.

“Ok,” she says, sitting down next to him. “Let’s talk.”

 

 _FIN_.


End file.
